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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

There has been a lot of controvery about Geni.com's
announcement on their Blog Geni.com
Pro Just Got a Whole Lot Better which says that from now on any Pro user
will be able to make changes to MY tree without my permission and free account
holders can no longer post profiles past your 3rd great grandfather.
You can read Geneablogger’s Geni – Stuck on Stupid
blog post, DearMYRTLE’s Geni.com
didn’t ask my opinion, Randy Seaver’s What
about Geni Free? post and so on to hear some bloggers’ reactions. I’ve
actually been complaining about Geni.com for months now but I seemed to have
been the only one who thought there was a problem.

I had been keeping my comments to myself thus far because
I had not seen any effects of this other than the usual several requests a
month from people wanting to merge my people with their people. However today I
went into my (free) account and saw a "revisions" tab. When I clicked
on it, I was surprised to see that 142 changes had been made to my tree,
including ones in which someone had changed the parents of my ancestors. NOT
OK.

First of all, I do not believe in the Universal Tree. I
think this failed miserably with Ancestry's WorldOneTree which used algorithms
to piece same names together. Secondly, I think this is an effort for a company
(and I'm not necessarily saying Geni.com is doing this) to try to own as much
genealogy as possible.

With that said, I became a Geni.com user early on when it
was still in beta after weighing my options for several months. I even convinced my
family members to join and they have been adding their family members to it as
well. But I stopped using it as soon as I "accidentally" accepted to
collaborate with someone and then everyone they collaborated with started
making changes to MY tree. My family members started emailing me and asking me
why people we didn’t know were making changes to our tree. I tried to talk to
geni.com and I couldn’t get any straight answers. Had I known when I joined in
August 2008 what their intentions would be, I would not have gone through all
of the trouble to set my tree up on this site and to invite my family members to
join.

I’m pretty disappointed and nagged by this because I feel
like the free users are the ones who put most of the content into the geni.com
database and now geni.com is selling
this to the pro account users. I feel like this should have been disclosed 3
years ago when I joined. I understand that plans change and technology changes,
but I feel like there should have been an opt out option. I was already
hesitant about putting my tree online and the only reason I chose geni.com was
because it WAS PRIVATE. Amy Coffin of the We Tree Blog mentioned her disappointment over the lack of privacy controls as well in her Where Keggers and Social Genealogy Intersect post. Now I have to try to explain to all my family members
what these changes mean and let them know that they don’t have to upgrade to a
Pro account if they do not want to.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

FGS recently posted their social media policy to their website.
I was very happy to see that they are allowing attendees to engage in various
forms of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and live blogging about the
speakers and conference highlights. In fact it is encouraged. This is a nice
change from the last conference I went to that did not allow any cell phone use
at all.

They were also very clear about certain grey areas like
photographs – they ask that you request the speaker’s permission before
photographing them – and that you do not use flash photography; they also
clarify that cell phones do not have to be turned OFF, but merely that the
ringer should be turned off so as not to interrupt the presentation. Lastly,
the social media policy clarified that although snippets and highlights are
allowed to be broadcast, the speaker should be properly cited or credited, and presentation
materials should not be reproduced “in full” during the conference.

Now will all of this even be possible? Paula recently posted
a blog
post to the FGS Conference Highlight blog about how a couple of co-chairs
went around and tested these features in the conference center and the
Starbucks across the street. It worked for them but you never know what happens
when a couple thousand technology-savvy genealogists come along!

So make sure you get your Tweet on at FGS 2011!

You can follow my highlights on Twitter at Smitty327 or search for the hashtag #fgs2011.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Paula gave us a “heads
up!” over at the FGS Conference Blog about what to expect if you plan to
attend the Prairie Social on Wednesday night while attending the FGS Conference in
Springfield, Illinois this coming September.

Do you think you can fit your Civil War uniform in your
suitcase?

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Disclosure: As an Official Blogger for FGS 2011, I received a complimentary pass to the Prairie Social on Wednesday night.

Photo of General Robert E. Lee from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

About Me

Contact Me: Ginger R. SmithI am an avid genealogist and librarian living in Durham, NC. I do extensive research at the North Carolina State Archives for my Brooks and Godwin families. If you would like assistance locating records at the Archives, please feel free to email me. This blog highlights my research and DNA testing updates. Please check out my Surname Page to see if we have any relatives in common!